Experience gained during a ten-year long involvement in modelling, program- ming and application in nonlinear optimization helped me to arrive at the conclusion that in the interest of having successful applications and efficient software production, knowing the structure of the problem to be solved is in- dispensable. This is the reason why I have chosen the field in question as the sphere of my research. Since in applications, mainly from among the nonconvex optimization models, the differentiable ones proved to be the most efficient in modelling, especially in solving them with computers,...

Though the volume covers 22 papers by 36 authors from 12 countries, the history in the background is bound to Hungary where, in 1973 Andras Pnkopa started to lay the foundation of a scientific forum, which can be a regular meeting spot for experts of the world in the field. Since then, there has been a constant interest in that forum. Headed at present by Tamas Rapcsak, the Laboratory of Operations Research and Decisions Systems of the Computer and Automation Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences followed the tradition in every respect, namely conferences were organized almost in every...